


unnamed homestuck & X/1999 crossover

by derogatory



Category: Homestuck, X/1999
Genre: CLAMP, Canonical Character Death, Crossover, Gen, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2012-11-17
Packaged: 2017-11-18 22:06:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/565785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derogatory/pseuds/derogatory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homestuck in the X/1999 setting.  you know, cause shit wasn't miserable enough already.</p>
<p>Hardly a full fic, just ideas when they came to me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unnamed homestuck & X/1999 crossover

When John wakes up, Karkat is waiting, face resting against the edge of the bed. No, he wasn't sleeping, the other boy irritability corrects him while John traces the imprints the creases in the sheets left on his friend's face.

He tries to remember why he's in a hospital.

"There was somebody at the door," John mumbles where Karkat shrieks YEAH it was a FUCKING MURDERER WHO STABBED YOU IN THE CHEST. Clearly Karkat isn't the best person to give the news, so John has to wait until the police arrive.

The officers ask some basic questions- did your father have any enemies, did you see anyone strange lurking around the house- and provide a rough outline of what he missed after the man in the doorway pushed him aside. They're calling him Jack Noir. He murdered two other people last night. He stabbed your father twelve times and Karkat buries his face in his hands, repeating how this is somehow all his fault.

When the scene can't be compromised and the pain in his chest is a heavily medicated ache, John returns home. Jade is waiting to help him clean up the overturned furniture, the remains of a half completed birthday cake. She explains that when Noir showed up, Rose and Dave slept through the night, so they didn't get hurt like you.

"They didn't come visit me," John notes, gathering the pieces of a blue birthday candle in his palm.

"Dave isn't talking to anybody." Jade blinks watery eyes behind her glasses, adding quietly. "Rose is um. Not so good either."  
\--

 

"I'll talk to her," Kanaya announces after hearing the details. Karkat clarifies that's an idiotic fuckin plan since Lalonde hasn't talked to anybody since the Noir killing spree, but Kanaya is better at the mothering shit, not so much the listening shit.

"Did you get a load a gibberish bullshit like Jade did?" he asks when the woman returns. Kanaya closes the door behind her slowly, staring at the surrogate sibling as if she's surprised to see him there at all. Karkat returns it with the same level glare as usual, mouth full of dinner this time.

"What?" he grumbles.

"Not gibberish," Kanaya corrects in heavy tones, breezing into the kitchen to fetch him a proper napkin. "She's just been having some bad dreams."  
\--

 

GC: S1NC3 TH1S 1S R34LLY 1MPORT4NT  
TG: okay i'll fucking bite  
TG: what  
GC: SOM3ON3 1S GO1NG TO K1LL YOUR BRO TON1GHT

 

“You knew this was going to happen,” Karkat snaps. “You knew and you warned fucking Strider but not John??”

“Dave could try and change it,” Terezi chirps back helpfully, sweeping her cane between them to try and trip up Karkat’s feet. “John would’ve just got sad.”

“He might not have got stabbed!” At Karkat’s snarl the seer nods sagely.

“Yep, he totally might’ve died.” She leers across the rapidly decreasing distance between them. “That’d probably make your decision a lot easier, right?” Karkat attempted to tilt his fact from the girl, ignoring the curious gazes of the other pedestrians along the sidewalk. 

“He’s got shit to do with what I’m deciding.” Terezi pulls away from her friend with an appraising hum, the kind of high pitched, seeing-eye dog only hearing sound that Karkat’s long understood as something really fucking annoying is about to come out of her too large mouth.

“Oh, I see!” She doesn’t see Karkat rolling his eyes. “You don’t want to work with that guy. Jack Noir.” For all his crimes, the words taste delicious on her lips.

“Who the fuck would!” Karkat crosses his arms irritably and picks up the pace. At this rate they’ll be late for fucking school, chattering about this stupid destiny bullshit. “In case you didn’t notice, that guy is a psycho and whoever’s side he’s on would have to be a psycho too.” He doesn't bother letting Terezi argue that, because even if she's got those all-knowing dreams, this isn't up for fucking debate. “Let the other team have him. I can- Whatever, I’ll fucking save this world if it means Jack Noir is somebody else’s teammate.”

“Are you deciding?” and from the distance of Terezi’s voice Karkat (with a groan) comes to a halt as well. He turns to face the blind girl with a long suffering glare he hopes her super senses can fucking pick up on. 

“You want me to make this kind of decision before fucking first period? Really.”

“I think you should let me tell you who the other Kamui is first.”  
\--

 

“It’s like you’re Cinderella and I’m your fairy godmother here to grant you wishes!” She kicks her red boots up onto the kitchen table.

“That’s not Cinderella,” John points out, as if fairy tale accuracy is the main issue when addressing an unknown girl in the room where his dad was stabbed to death. “well, I mean. It is.. But you’d only be a fairy godmother if you were offering to take me to a ball, not help fight to save the world.”

“Oh, c’mon John,” and when the girl smirked he swore her teeth we made entirely of fangs. “Would you rather go on a fancy dress up date or have a bunch of killer fights with a cool chick like me?” They agree they could probably do both.  
\--

 

"Except nothing's ever completely hopeless." 

John looks over his shoulder and beams as bright as the sun that burnt out Terezi's eyes, that destroyed their hometown in the fires. His whole stupid expression is as radiant as a thousand nuclear suns crashing into a doomed, polluted planet, grilling all the hapless civilizations below.

"No, fuckass," Karkat mutters. "This one is."   
\--

 

“I wasn’t asleep.” Dave talks like they’re having any old conversation. Like they’re still sitting shoulder to shoulder and playing Mario Kart instead of locking weapons so fresh they still smell like friends’ blood. 

“What?” When John tries to respond, Dave jerks his elbow forward, colliding with the other boy’s teeth. 

“You think that guy kills my bro and I just sleep through it?” Nursing what he was sure was a split lip, John has to admit he hadn't thought about it. Rose had known what was coming because of the visions (no, dreams, cause they're dreamseers), so it would make sense maybe Dave hadn't avoided Noir by luck alone.

“You don’t get it, John. All the shit in this world I had to wade through to find some crappy reality where he didn’t die.” “But it’s not worth it. Bro wouldn’t want to stay in some world where everybody had to die-“

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Cause maybe I don’t want to live in a world where he had to die.”  
\--

 

Aradia finds him in the desert during a study abroad archeology trip. She never explains how she knew he was a Dragon of Earth, only that he was waiting for them for a long time. He can only communicate through sign language, although the most John ever learns is how to spell those initials in the weathered palm of the other boy's hand.

"Why's he keep his face covered?" John asks once, watching him from the corner of his eyes. Aradia glances from her textbook to the cloaked figure, restringing a crudely fashioned spear.

"I think he's hiding," she muses. John brushes that explanation aside- he's saved our lives a bunch of times! Why would he wanna hide from us? "No," Aradia mumbles, lingering on a page of hieroglyphics that outlined the tomb where he'd been. "It's not from us."

They have half a barrier up when he spots Jack Noir's crooked sneer, and John feels the bandages slip past his fingers the moment WV stops hiding. The first and last time John sees his face is as Jack Noir skewers him.

"Did you see him?" John rasps, clutching after Aradia's arm, trying to hold his stance and his courage against the thing that massacred his family, their friend. "He knew him. How did he know Jack Noir?" 

Aradia keeps her eyes on the pile of bloodied rags he became, stone carvings depicting a failed (or too successful) rebellion streaming through her mind.  
\--

 

Having known her destiny even before their leader realized his own, Kanaya made just the outfit for the occasion of her death.

"Choosing the color was the easiest part," she smiles, body draped in emerald green.

Even with all his pleading, Karkat can feel the weight of responsibility in Kanaya's hands, the glean of Eridan's weapon on her back, and know this is another part of the war he can't fight against. But it's the first time he wants to try.

"You can't stop this," she pushes his hands back, turning to meet the appointed deliverer. "You should be happy."  
\--

 

"You should be happy," Vriska repeats, her leer faltering each time John pushes the weapon back to her. With one hand he fends off the girl's presentation of the spear, wiping tears with the other hand. "He gave his life to bring this weapon into existence, right?" Right, John hiccups. "So take it!"

"Vriska, I'm sorry," he whispers, shoving back against her offering, Vriska's own grip still slick with Tavros's blood. "He was your friend, and you had to-"

"And now he's your weapon! That's great isn't it?" The next time John struggles she contemplates driving the weapon into his chest, mimicking her earlier action and again watching someone close to her sputter and die at her feet. Maybe this is just like all the other people you've killed, Vriska wonders. Maybe it's just another thing to get used to- orchestrating the sacrifice of everyone you ever cared about.

"You're supposed to be happy about this," Vriska snarls, knuckles white as her fingers squeeze around his, forcing them to close over the hilt of his delivered weapon. "Why aren't we happy?"  
\--

 

John shakes the sweaty palm when it's offered to him and his hand aches for the rest of the week. The man has some disagreements with the principles of their group, but he knows he can't properly protect Nepeta from the opposite side.

Vriska points out they're not running a teaparty any Dragon of Earth can just drop in and join. Feferi side-eyes her and offers their new member some tea and crackers. Equius holds the cup as delicately as possible, and after the third one shatters everyone decides to focus on the strategy part of the meeting. Somehow they never get past the topic of the latest reality shows, teasing Feferi about how she snorts when she laughs.

Gamzee kills both the traitor and his cat-loving buddy for good measure. Karkat uses this as an example that what they're doing isn't a game and that some people shouldn't take this shit so lightly.

That some person, that Kamui who hasn't got his hands dirty gets the leader's message loud and clear. It was hard to miss from the way Gamzee wrote it in their blood on the sidewalk, their heads displayed from atop telephone poles outside of John's childhood home. The police assume it's connected to the Jack Noir murders, the Seals relocate to a new safe house.

"It's all my fault," John mumbles into Aradia's shoulder.

"No, it isn't," she whispers back.

"Yeah, it is," Vriska corrects. "But we're still gonna win."  
\--

 

The story of Vriska’s first death was horrifying enough John considers covering his eyes halfway through. He didn’t know this Tavros kid (maybe they could meet soon!), but he can’t imagining leaving anybody to die, even if they mind controlled you to. 

Aradia’s story is lacking in details, but after the first demonstration of abilities awakening, John is more than happy to skip the gruesome details behind the nicer friend’s death. The important thing is we’re all here alive right now! He grins, ignoring the pain from the scar on his chest.

Aradia happily stacks their hands over oneanother at the center of their circle. Vriska hurriedly rearranges her hand so it’s between Aradia's and John's.

"Like I said-" Vriska's grin as wide as the prospective world destruction that lays before them. "We're like gods now, totally unkillable!"

"Mostly," the other girl reminds her.  
\--

 

"You didn't tell me Feferi was with them," Sollux hisses as her seashell shaped barrier slides between the civilians and themselves.

"Yeah, we're all fighting somebody we don't want to," Karkat grumbles, dragging the sword behind him. Dave plucks it from their leader's hands with ease, moving to the front of their formation.

"Speak for yourself."

Sollux doesn't have to be conflicted for long- the barrier's up ten minutes before the girl has her stomach blasted out. That's the last thing he sees.

"I did us both a favor," Eridan snarls against the blood in his mouth. When he spits it mingles with Feferi's blood, pooling at their feet. Sollux hauls back another punch- turns out he can aim surprisingly well for a blind guy.

 

“So what,” Vriska yawns. “You beat up that science loser and we’re supposed to let you join the club?” 

“Honestly, I don’t really care about the fate of the world," Sollux hisses. "That’s probably why I was on their side to begin with.” He casts a gaze through the once opposing team, even if he can't see them.   
“But I really want kill that guy.”

Aradia lingers in that line of sight, but his eyes on her are as empty as looking at the blank wall. John follows the girl's apprehensive eyes on Sollux's. If you want him to talk to you, John wonders, why don't you say something.

 

"With you my powers are fun, right?" Aradia smiles through a sheet of hair at her friend. Sure, John replies. Now that he knows she can never actually stay dead, all the times Aradia fakes it, that this time the rebar that went through her chest is the final straw, that he's really lost her for good- ah! I got you! 

"They're pranks," he supplies helpfully, because for once in a long, miserable while Aradia looks like the one that needs help.

"It's not like that with Sollux," she begins and John has a gross feeling this is the real story he’s been hoping they can avoid. He swallows back the lump in his throat. "We liked each other, but you already saw that stuff doesn't work out when we're supposed to be fighting." The lump in his throat turns to a cold dead weight thinking of Equius crossing sides to be with Nepeta, thinking about Karkat's hand in his. 

"So when he thought he'd killed me, I thought-" If John's yelp distracted her from the story, she didn't show it. As a time traveler, Aradia probably had all sorts of experience predicting how people handle bad news. "I thought he'd be happier without worrying about me."

 

"You killed Aradia?" John rounds on her. "That's how she first died? You made Sollux kill her?"

"It didn't take," Vriska mutters, expression shifting fast from a smirking buddy to a cornered animal. "Besides, I did her a favor."

 

"We said we weren't gonna tell John about what we did." 

"I only told him about Sollux and I,” she dismisses the other god tier’s supposed righteous anger. "I left you out for most of it."

"Yeah, I bet you did!" Vriska snarls. "You probably left out what you did to me!"

"What you did to Terezi," Aradia begins ticking the items off her fingers in a list ("She took my eye and my arm!"). "What you did to Tavros-" ("John needed that weapon!") "I meant his legs." (Vriska shrugs, as if crippling a one-time love interest was par for the course.) 

“The point is Vriska,” and when Aradia stops listing the details and focuses her gaze squarely on the other girl’s face, both expressions are twisted in mutual anger. “John cares about you and you lie to him.”  
\--

 

Eight months after their first group meeting, Vriska disappears. John isn't too worried initially, because she has a tendency to wander off and do her own thing, but the other God Tier isn't so convinced. She said she wanted to give you something for the anniversary, remember? Aradia presses. Before, John figured everyone would have piped up with ideas for what a person like Vriska would consider a "gift". In the emptiness of their near deserted hideout, only their dreamseer speaks up.

"You should go see Karkat," Rose offers. 

"I thought you said that was a bad idea," he replies, sullenly remembering the seals last intervention with his Karkat meetings ("No e---nemy fraternization!" Feferi had declared while everyone steadfastly avoided pointing out the hypocrisy in her statement.)

"It is," Aradia agrees. "Which is why we're coming with you." 

Jade is still recovering, so Sollux volunteers to keep guard. John notes the way the new member’s face turns when he hears Aradia’s voice, the way his entire posture changes when he realizes she’s in the room with them. It gives him a weird pit in his stomach thinking about the change someone goes through when they’re near someone important to them. He suddenly needs to find Vriska as soon as possible.

 

Then there was some kissing! Or maybe just a snowball fight- both sound pretty great and she’s not about to pick the right plan for a perfect human d8! Maybe they can just keep going on that first date forever until they do all the things, go on all the dates. Vriska figures this is a flawless plan as the blood seeps through the front of her shirt.

 

"She would've won too," Karkat mutters, hands shoved in his pockets, lingering well behind Dave and the dreamseer, eyes darting from any direction John’s look. “But he’d have killed us.”

"So Vriska could defeat Jack Noir," Aradia breathes and in her voice those observations sound like a true prophecy. Somehow from the source, from between Terezi's lopsided smirk, John thinks it sounds like a threat.

"And he killed her too," John manages, biting the inside of his cheek so hard he can taste blood. "Jack Noir killed my dad, Rose's mom, Dave's brother and now he killed Vriska too?"

“Nah.” Terezi's dead eyes stare back at him. “That one was me.”

(It’s all right. “It’s NOT all right- she killed her!” John, please calm down. ) The girl keeps her hands as a heavy weight against John’s trembling shoulders, raising her gaze like the rising tide.

“Give us her body,” Aradia orders. “Whether or not you respect us, Karkat knows she was important to John. She deserves to rest in peace.”

“What body?” Eridan sneers after Aradia. “That flatchested shell in tacky boots? We threw it out with the rest of the trash.”


End file.
